


Mary Jane

by ivyfluoresce



Category: Prison Break
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cats, Closeted Character, Dark, Depression, Drug Use, F/M, Gen, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Post-Break Up, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:01:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24907270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyfluoresce/pseuds/ivyfluoresce
Summary: Is being sober hopeless?>> A story I've been working on since 2018ish and hope to get published someday.
Relationships: Alexander Mahone/Michael Scofield
Comments: 12
Kudos: 19





	1. 20/20

Pain comes and goes. The stakes of an event are there and forgotten with time. It’s a dream by next week, a story by next month, and entirely irrelevant past that. 

Comparing knowledge to visual acuity is bizarre and ineffective. Why place such a high price on the past? It doesn't matter anything more than the present, and you hardly give a damn about that anyway.

…That’s nitpicking, of course.

Hindsight is more like eyeballing the rear-view mirror from the passenger's seat of a Celica. Your fixation on what’s already past makes you a danger to yourself and others. You have a skewed view of the road -- and an insolent disregard for oncoming traffic by extension. Maybe you would have changed the vehicle's course if you were in the driver's seat, seeing now what you may not have seen before… But by that same logic, you can't quite see anymore what you would have seen in the moment. Considering additionally that those mirrors have been adjusted to the driver's best advantage, a miscalculation on your part could result in a deadlier car crash than one on the driver's part. Ergo, if hindsight could be measured like visual acuity, it would be something more akin to 20/80 -- which, in the state of Illinois, isn't sharp enough to grant you any type of driver's license.

Fortunately for Alexander Mahone and his grimy peripherals, he sold that Celica for drug money years ago. Unfortunately for Alexander Mahone and his grimy peripherals, he was starting to wonder whether that was a bullet he wanted to miss.

"Oh, she's beautiful... I love her eyes. What breed is she?"

But those were precisely the idioms that landed him in Dr. Tancredi's chaise lounge.

"Just an American Shorthair. She might've been a mutt, but I wouldn't know what with. Got her from a friend's litter."

Dr. Tancredi -- or, Sara is what she preferred to be called -- continued swiping through the pictures on Alex's phone. They'd been doing this for a majority of the twenty minutes they’d spent in the session already and he was beginning to wonder if this was a waste of money. He could have just invited Sara to coffee or something if all she wanted to do was ogle his cat. Of course, she would have declined with _"Sorry, Alex, this is a strictly professional relationship,"_ but at least he would have saved a couple hundred dollars.

"I have a calico myself. Well, a spoiled, full-grown calico who won't touch her food if it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to put in her bowl. She's cute if you catch her on a good day," Sara shared with a chuckle. "How old is Janie?"

Pinned to the clipboard in Sara’s lap was the packet Alex had spent the last few weeks slaving away on. Only two of the five pages were complete. That’s not to say it was a task, nor is it to say Alex was a world-class procrastinator -- though, time does tend to escape you when you spend it compulsively stashing the skin of your neck under your fingernails. Being that Alex didn’t have to worry about that back in the BAU, he was consistently on top of his workload. Nowadays… Well, this packet wasn’t saving anyone’s life. Sara, who took to jotting notes in Alex’s file every time he failed to complete the assignment, didn’t seem like a fan of this mindset. Once she finished scanning through it, having done so at Alex’s unamused silence, she corrected herself. “Sorry. How old was she?”

"In those pictures, three or four months. But she lived to about two years."

Janie, Alex had disclosed the previous Wednesday, was a young cat which had kept him company at his last place. She was bright-eyed, endlessly energetic, and never really grew out of her teething habits. As tokens of her gratitude, she bestowed upon Alex gifts of small mutilated animals -- or telephone cords mistaken for such. If she felt this offering didn’t quite do the trick, she would knead on Alex’s leg or bat at his nose while he slept. The miniature fishhooks she often forgot to retract never failed to get her message across. On an unrelated note, Alex was a dog person.

"Origami, huh?"

He frowned. "What about it?"

"It's a complex art, but it suits you. Good way to keep grounded." Sara had resumed her swipe-fest in Alex’s absence. She turned the phone for him to see. "Makes for cute cat pictures, too."

Sure enough, the image was of Janie scrambling after a paper crane. Alex didn't remember adding that picture to the folder Sara had asked for. It wasn’t one he was particularly fond of. An origami-inspired mobile spun in the only visible corner of the room, lush in paper animals and flowers and other familial symbols. 

"I didn't peg you for the 'progressive relaxation' type, so this makes sense."

Alex scoffed. "Sorry to burst your bubble, but that stuff's not mine."

A petty animosity rose in Alex’s throat every time Sara played dumb to get him talking. They’d both collected their Master’s in Psychology. Alex had already drawn most of the conclusions Sara came to. Therapy was condescending in that way. The apparent power imbalance meant Alex was supposed to lie like a poor wounded animal while Sara climbed on his carcass to pick from her money tree. Every breath he took just hoisted her higher.

"I didn't live alone.”

Sara’s eyebrows knit. Alex couldn’t tell if it was real. He looked at the clock above her door. Jasper, polished, filled with roman numerals that he silently urged to skip. "Well, that changes a lot about how I need to assess the past few years, Alex.”

“Hmm.”

“How did your ex-wife feel about you living with someone new?"

Another thing that peeved Alex about people like her was the fact that they all liked to twiddle their overpriced ink pens and juice them into their clients’ open wounds. No buildup, no countdown, no preparation whatsoever. Just silent ache one moment and a searing pain the next. "She didn't know. And she wouldn't have cared, either. Pam is a good woman, she made her choice."

"I didn't say she wasn't. I know you're still close with her -- which is why I find it curious you not only failed to mention this person to your therapist, but to your ex-wife."

He couldn’t even say that she was twisting the knife. Or jimmying the pen, so to speak. She was just baiting him into saying what she already knew to be true. "It wasn't important. Not then, not now. He was just a rebound."

Sara slowly began nodding in Alex’s peripherals. Just nodding. Not writing, not waiting, not studying Alex. His eyes fell from the clock. He’d be here a while now.

"She.”

Sara turned off Alex's phone and set it on the coffee table before them. It faintly occurred to Alex that she wouldn’t have been able to tell him the colour of the cat’s coat were he to ask. She wasn’t even looking at her. "I take it things didn't go over too well between you and this other person... With the house fire and all."

"Could've been better."

Alex couldn’t make out what Sara scratched into her notes from where he sat, but fifteen cat pictures and a pronoun later and it already looked like an inky blue shitstorm. It probably wasn’t anything he didn’t already know. "In your packet, there was a question about domestic abuse. You indicated you've been affected by it at some point in time. Does this person have anything to do with that?"

"If you count me nearly driving a boot knife between her eyes, then yeah, sure."

The scratching paused.

"Foreplay."

"Funny." She finished writing.

"We were planning to travel to Panama for a week and got into an argument because she was worried about my use. I promised it wasn't that bad and that I could get through the week without bringing anything, so I didn't. But I found a dealer there, and... I was stressed and high and more angry with myself than anything, but... It was his voice yelling at me."

Sara started her faux-compassionate nodding again. Alex scoffed.

"Are you doing that because you already thought I had violent tendencies or because you think I'm ashamed of a fucking pronoun?"

"Are you?"

Alex reclined incredulously. He’d barely opened up and somehow he still regretted it. "Can't believe I just handed you my whole paycheck for this shit.”

In third grade, Alex had a crush on a girl named Tammy. Tammy had cerebral palsy, so Alex couldn't remember much about her outside of lonely recesses hoping she was okay and the confusion of learning she was transferred to Special Ed. In fifth grade, Alex dated a preppy cheerleader, and then a soccer player in junior high -- both girls. Bianca, in sophomore year, was his highschool sweetheart, and they were together until graduation. Bianca went back to Colombia for university, but Alex still thought some days that she was his soulmate. He never had the heart to get back in contact with her. What, to tell her that her Honor Roll-athlete boyfriend ended up throwing all of that potential away? After Bianca was Kris the female librarian, then Jillian the female lifeguard, then Pamela Larson, the woman Alex finally put a ring on. All women, from the time Alex was in grade school. His dating history was straight as a razorblade.

Up until about two years ago, that is; when Michael Scofield nicked it.

But, what -- between the cats, the drugs, and the mystery lover, Sara probably took him for a modern-day Freddie Mercury. And it seems like it would be a simple thing to explain why that wasn’t the case, but Alex still stumbled over his own tongue when it came down to it. Pam had him all broken up. It only made sense that the rebound took that long. But when you consider that Alex was on the hunt for a new ring just a few months back, that razorblade was starting to look more like a crinkle cutter. 

Sara wasn’t fazed by the verbal assault. “Was that the worst of the abuse?”

 _Abuse._ “It was an accident. A one-time thing. He forgave me.”

“Sounds like a painful memory.”

“To be completely honest, Sara, it’s barely a memory. And I’d rather not talk about it.”

He watched her scoop her legs up along with the excess cloth of her skirt into the chair with her. “That’s alright. It didn’t sound like this person was who you had in mind when I brought up abuse anyhow.”

There was a certain regality about Sara… An eliteness. She was a fair-skinned, sinewy lady with the visage of an African leopard. Everything from the jasper clock above the office door to the manicured nails cuffing her dress shirt’s sleeves was treated with respect to herself, sabotaging her attempts to be viewed as an equal by Alex.

“Because it wasn’t abuse.”

“Maybe not. I wasn’t there.”

“It wasn’t.”

Sara set her pen down on the clipboard’s fastener. The frays at the end of her shawl shivered in the AC’s breeze. She clutched it closer to her body. “Why did you mark that domestic violence question the way that you did?”

Her eyes, that question, danced around Alex’s face, probing every open pore. No wintry gaze was cold enough to soothe his frustration. A seething smirk tore at him. “My father beat my mother, and once she wised up and left, he beat me. For twelve years, like a harp seal, with a belt in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. How could you accuse me of dating a man when that’s how we treat other men? How could I do that?”

The suppression in Sara’s face couldn’t have been more obvious if she wrote it on her forehead.

Alex didn’t know why he made that parallel. He averted his eyes.

Sara’s note-taking became a comforting sound. It meant Alex’s silence wasn’t being monitored. It meant the irritation crawling just under the surface of his skin could rest. That last collision between the utensil and the wood of the doctor’s clipboard brought with it a bout of nausea. That irritation was mutual, though. The ponytail securing Sara’s long brown hair wormed looser the more she moved -- had been doing so since her newest client entered the room. It gave her solemn expression a frazzled frame. Alex was almost always the last appointment of a long day. She must’ve been itching to fling that clipboard square into his stubborn face. 

Instead, she only murmured, “That’s one wound time alone can’t heal.”

Wisdom is 20/20 -- or, closer to it. There’s a fine line between hindsight and wisdom, but Alex had to squint pretty hard for it to come into focus and tended to neglect it either way. Hindsight says Sara enjoyed picking his scabs. Wisdom says she was just doing her job. Hindsight says Sara had a rescuer complex. Wisdom says Alex did too. Hindsight says keep the car. Wisdom says the car is a red herring. 

Alex says he’s better off blind.

“Alex,” Sara started, putting down her obsessions and folding her hands over them. “Avoiding a couple of topics is one thing, and I get that. But if you want to avoid all of them… Well, I’m kind of useless to you, aren’t I?”

Alex replaced his snide remark with a sigh.

“You struggle with addiction, trauma, the loss of your marriage and your job, self-isolation, and _maybe_ your sexuality…” she trod lightly on that last bit, “and that’s just what I’ve collected from these two sessions. We both know you came here for a reason. I’m just struggling to see what it is.”

Benzos and opiates fogged up Alex’s windows so effectively that his last moments spent in that office were headlight hazes in the back of his blacked-out car. A glimmer from Sara’s left ring finger had enraptured him, as did the clock over her door and the crooked mountainscapes on her wall. Sara was an escapist. She was an empress who paid it forward by reminding Alex of time’s passage and the life he could’ve had. He was due back next Wednesday, something about a crisis schedule. Whether or not he’d show was another question entirely. 

Joliet’s brumal sunset came homelier to Alex than any false hope rehabilitation could offer. ‘Home’ in its most typical sense was a commodious apartment on Fitz Avenue that Alex only retired to when he had no other options. Rent was appallingly low, the walls were bleak, and the carpet reeked of reefer. That last detail was thanks to the couple who lived in the unit before Alex, both of whom were avid smokers. Alex himself was never a fan, and that heavy, earthy aroma could get damn near nauseating when his train of thought strapped him to the kooky seat and took him on a little trip down Memory Lane. The tracks wrecked at rock bottom... Maintenance was lacking, didn’t have the energy. Alex laid there like a crippled animal until harder drugs beckoned by the sweat in his pores and the spasms in his hands.

He came to a halt outside the local diner. Pale window light overtook the glow the sinking sun lost. Inside, one woman stood behind the counter centring the entry, managing menus for a family of three. Mauve lipstick framed the flash of a blinding smile. This was one of many places Alex frequented. That woman had a soft spot for people down and out, so you could often find the seats of this classy 50s-style diner occupied by transients. Honestly, it was more of a home to Alex than that pot-scented apartment was. She’d probably have a pencil or something lying around for Alex to slave away on the packet with, and that was a good enough excuse to send Alex inside.

The tiny brass bell suspended over the door dinged. The overpowering smell of cooking meat dulled her words out to vocal hums. Her lips moved, her smile didn’t, and it all was illuminated by the little screen sitting beside her. Alex leaned over the counter and quietly asked, “Do you… Do you have a pen? Or… Or a pencil? Just -- anything I can write with?”

Her lips sealed. They kept that upward turn. She slipped a sleek black utensil from under the counter, slim sepia fingers through thin air, swirling wisps of an early morning beverage, coffee under the light of a wintry window. Alex asked for a water. He didn't have much cash or an appetite on him, so he slid her what he did have and wandered off to seat himself. She was light on her feet, feathery. She didn’t move much, but glid when she did. Alex couldn’t remember when it happened, but he had a menu beside him now that he never accepted. Maybe it was already there when he sat down. Within the hour or so Alex had the therapy papers in his kangaroo pocket, they’d trained themselves to curl right back up when he tried to flatten them out. He fished around his pockets -- his jacket, the hoodie, the jeans. His reading glasses were nowhere to be found. He must have forgotten them at home. Instead, he pulled out his disposable cell phone and laid it out on the upper edge of the papers, using his left forearm to weigh down to lower. He splayed the tangled brown curls falling over his face and hunched over until the page’s print came into view. The next few were part of a questionnaire. Wouldn't be too difficult.

_Physical:_

_Do you eat/drink regular quantities at regular increments? (Yes/No)_

_Do you have abnormal cravings? (Yes/No)_

_Do you pay attention to your diet? (Yes/No)_

_Do you have irregular sleeping patterns? (Yes/No)_

_Are you/were you sickly as a child? (Yes/No)_

_Are you/were you in an abusive household as a child? (Yes/No)_

_Do you partake in unhealthy activities? e.g. substance abuse, self-harm, purging, etc. (Yes/No)..._

He skimmed through the remainder of the checklist’s ‘physical’ portion. It made him feel like a troubled teen again, being interrogated by Mrs. Greene because he showed up to English class with a black eye. He went through and answered them. Serious matters, sure, but he still ribbed himself when he realised he was dismissing them the same way he had with Mrs. Greene. _No, I don’t eat the way I should; yes, I fucked up my circadian rhythm; yes, my immune system fell apart at a gust of wind,_ and so on and so forth until he reached the first written response.

_Describe your most common reaction to stress._

_Stress._ Alex snorted. When he pushed the packet away and set his pen down, his arm bumped something. A glass of water. He hadn’t heard or felt the hostess sweep by. That sort of thing didn’t alarm him anymore. Speaking of withdrawal, he left his pills at home. The water shivered in Alex’s hand, dramatising his tremors. Tomorrow was Thursday. David would be selling at around four in the morning. Heroin. Yeah, opioids are what really fucked Alex up. He was trying to stop that. Stop running to David with his issues. Hence the therapy, hence the cynicism. The easiest solutions tended to be the most temporary.

The family from earlier sat across the restaurant, barely keeping within Alex’s line of sight. The mother pecked the top of her daughter’s head and the little girl scribbled all over every napkin she could get her hands on. If Alex hadn’t been such a dimwit when it came to Pam and his son, Cameron, he could’ve had that. Some sense of belonging. A house that felt like a home. When it came down to it, every person sitting at that table across the restaurant had a steady hand and a firm grasp, and they wouldn’t let each other fall through their fingers. They weren’t chased from one alleyway to the next by shadows and paranoia, weren’t pursued by an incessant fatigue. They didn’t have an ice cold patch soaking through their last pair of jeans.

Alex took his hand away from his stubble. No cup.

The packet was curling in its moisture, the ink of Alex’s handwriting bleeding across the pages. He peered beneath the table and located the glass -- now in four or five pieces by his feet. There was no way he’d get through the night without his pills. Whether he liked it or not, he needed to go back to the apartment tonight. There was no way he’d sleep. No way he’d pull through.

He was stopped by the bicep when he reached down to pick up the pieces. Sepia. The fingers.

“”You’re gonna cut yourself, hun. Are you okay?”

Alex sat back and let the woman duck under the table while he fetched a stack of napkins by the back of the table to try and clean his mess. She must have been monitoring his slow reaction time starting the minute the cup hit the tiles. He looked down at her. “I’m really sorry.”

“I am too, don’t worry,” she dismissed.

Alex frowned. “...What for?”

“For you.”

 _Well._ Alex was sorry for that too.

He held out the soaked napkins for the little bin she’d been using for the glass. He thanked her again for helping. She told him it wasn’t a problem. If it weren’t for her little comment, Alex might’ve thought her sweet.

He rolled up his packet again -- the opposite way this time -- and stuck it back in his pocket. Then he grabbed the menu and returned it to the hostess. She said something to him, but he wasn’t really paying attention.

The apartment wasn’t within practical walking distance, but Alex was no longer the proud owner of a Celica. He got cozy with long walks, which was probably for the best when his addictions ate away at any muscle overlaying his wiry six-foot body. Minimal traffic cut down on the blinding glare of coloured lights, making the trek back to the apartment that much less disorienting. On the bright side, walking meant more time for mental preparation. Nostrils are the easiest orifices for nostalgia to squirm into.

Alex’s legs quaked underneath the pathetic weight of his body. His head was spinning so severely that his uprightness was a shock, but he’d still blame it on the cold. Moments like these, he remembered why he gave sobriety a shot in the first place. Rehab wasn’t much of an option -- something about the absurd cost and being surrounded by people undergoing the same misery was immensely triggering. The minute he left, he shot so much heroin it almost entirely erased his recollection of the days inside. Vaguely, he remembered the woman there in his private sessions. With Dr. Tancredi’s eliteness, that superiority complex, that patronisation. Her faux-friendly voice, her flawless skin, too-perfect teeth, French manicure. He also remembered blood on his knuckles, on some furniture of the hotel-type room he stayed in. He remembered laughing. If it weren’t for those violent outbursts, he would still be well-off. Part-time desk job, pushing pencils, putting on his own faux-friendly voice when interviews arose with people he had his own power imbalance with. That could be Alex, the psychologist. The behavioural analyst. But his too-perfect teeth bore streaks of discolouration and his flawless skin was littered with scabs and abscesses. He would never see the other side of that power dynamic again. It killed to think that the secret to remission lied in swallowing his pride. Maybe he wasn’t there yet, maybe he’d never be. Maybe some part of him wanted these experiences to mean something and wouldn’t settle for better days until he made sense of it. Maybe he was alright dying on that hill.

Distant house bass rumbled from within one of a series of brick buildings coming into view. Any hope of sleep was already long gone, so it didn’t faze him much. Alex gripped the railing of the granite stairs up to his apartment, half-trodding and half-pulling himself up the steps. The vibrations of that music were tangible through the metal, through his shoes, through everything around him. The rest of the night was so still that Alex questioned whether it was real. It was new if not. Once his trial-and-error of jabbing keys at the doorknob found success, he learned that it muffled behind the door. Some teenagers elsewhere in the complex must’ve been throwing a party.

And there it was. Nostalgia, seducing him by the nose, as scent so overpowered music and domestic disarray and the state of standing desultorily by an open door. The keys slipped from Alex’s twitchy fingers. He could barely hear them hit the ground over all of the sensory input. There was that tang in the air, that sweet and overwhelming presence that took him back to sunrises faded by the spin of a paper mobile. Fiery dawns enriched by delicious smoke and a foreign jaws in hand -- by lungfuls of rich, balmy, odious exhales spinning across Alex’s lips. He despises it, but he adores it, and he can’t resist secondhand smoke when it comes with wet skin and eyes as golden as they are pink, with a voice so rich when soothed, drizzling two lone tongues in honey and lacing them together.

But Alex was unbearably sober, and still standing by the apartment door. One hand fingered the pages of the therapy questionnaire in his pocket and the other fisted by his side to still its jitter. His jeans were still cold and wet. His headache was getting to be a nightmare.

If Alex could take the wheel and reroute the past, knowing now what he didn’t before, he wouldn’t. All he saw in that rear-view mirror was another drifting Celica.

Hindsight can’t be 20/20, because hindsight’s the pair of rose-coloured glasses Alex uses to neutralise every red light he rolls through. He knows he’s violating the restriction on his license. He just doesn’t care.

Hindsight, wisdom, oblivion, recklessness…

Semantics. They’re just a cynic’s way of introducing downward spirals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, it's Dom. :)  
> I've been working on this story for years now -- planning, writing, trashing, rewriting, tweaking... etc. The plan was to keep it to myself, but there's really nothing to motivate me like feedback. If you like my work, let me know! My writing/Prison Break Twitter account is @/inkyfluoresce (U before the O, common mistake). Hope everyone's staying safe!


	2. Sacrifices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW // Graphic discussion of death, suicide, and self-harm (along with the usual)

The funny thing about addiction is that it has a way of showing you who you really are.

Well, maybe that’s dramatic. It shows you what you _could_ be, flayed from personality to the feral, desperate thing a man is at his core. It shows you the pieces of yourself you’d be willing to sacrifice when it comes to survival.

The music outside had faded some time ago. Alex was left alone with the cap of a mislabelled prescription bottle, fiddling it between his fingers. His hand didn’t shake. It was hard to imagine it ever had -- manipulating the bottle cap felt foreign, like flipping the y-axis or saying a colour word’s color rather than its word. Fine motor skills meant mental gymnastics, but it was very possible if he gave it some time. And Alex had all the time in the world. He’d gotten home at around eleven and he had to meet David at four, but he still had at least eight hours before he had to worry about that.

Veratril was the benzodiazepine Alex was prescribed when he worked for the FBI. It was to help the anxiety and the post-traumatic stress. It worked. Maybe a little too well, some days. Made him forget the things he’d do to a person, or the things he was expected to do. He got used to that underlying oblivion; having control over himself and his senses, but being able to neglect his questionable intentions at the same time. He started taking it more often than prescribed. That sensation of walking underwater, it was nice. It got to the point that Alex couldn’t limit himself to dosing up in the short moments of privacy he secured on the job. Or, didn’t want to. One day, overloaded with paperwork on a case he couldn’t care much less about, he disassembled his pen. Maybe out of boredom, maybe out of restlessness. No one would bother him in his office -- he had a tendency to snap when he was interrupted. It gave him the time to learn that he could hollow out his pen, and it made a perfectly inconspicuous little storage unit for those tiny white pills. When he was at a crime scene or sitting in the office with colleagues, all he had to do was excuse himself briefly, draw it from his chest pocket, and return clearer than before. It was a godsend, that pen. But even popping pills on the job didn’t totally cure Alex of his ails. He still had nightmares, saw things. What this job had done to him couldn’t be reversed by any drastic dose.

But that wouldn’t stop Alex from trying it.

In time, his psychiatrist would recognise the abuse. He would clean his glasses, adjust the wrists of his suit jacket, and downwardly tell Alex to “get help.” Looking back, Alex might’ve heeded the advice. But there’s something to be said for ‘looking back’. That man deprived Alex of his mental health and threw him to the wolves. That’s what they all did. That’s what they were paid to do.

And that’s how Alex met David Apolskis. He was just a finicky teenager at the time, roped into a side hustle by his peers, but Alex didn’t really care about how David ended up dealing so long as he was dealing to Alex.

Ethics, common sense, honesty -- sacrifices for survival.

Alex’s pen was never empty those days. Or, maybe it always was; his most vivid memories in the office were twisting and untwisting it under his desk, shielded from the prying eyes of his coworkers through the mostly glass walls. Pamela Mahone noticed his behaviour. Noticed everything. Not the pills, he kept those concealed from his family best of all. But every one-sided conversation they had in the living room while Cameron played with the neighbours in the driveway; every night she felt him get out of bed and light a cigarette by the open window; every morning she woke up alone -- Alex wasn’t as subtle about it as he hoped he was. When Pam noticed their four-year-old’s colouring books going missing, she knew where to find them. When her rubber bands or her curling iron were misplaced, she knew why. She never confronted him about it. Not even during the divorce or the custody battle. Alex only became aware she knew one night while he gazed out blankly over the flowerbed by the back door, when she took the cigarette from his mouth and stuck it into her own. Pam wasn’t a smoker. She coughed pretty badly. But she didn’t stop. And they talked, at an angle, about where Alex could find the vaseline. About an AA group nearby, about some therapists she knew. About marriage never having changed their friendship, and about her always being there for Alex, no matter what. The only thing she didn’t beat around was the fact that she couldn’t let Cameron grow up with a father like her own. Alex was becoming unreliable. Constantly missing, doing the inexplicable, distancing himself from the family. Making them feel like he wanted to leave. She wouldn’t let Cameron’s childhood be a repeat of her own. If Alex wanted to go, “...Then go.”

Pamela Mahone, the only woman in the world strong enough to handle Alex, was filing for divorce.

She put out the cancer stick, flicked it out into the garden, and wandered off to bed. She knew Alex wouldn’t fight her on it. She knew he needed time to think. She knew Alex too well. That’s why it hurt.

He didn’t sleep that night. After the conversation, he stood by the door silently. Then he met David again. The Veratril, the nicotine, the burning, the colouring, the meditating, the late nights, the early mornings, the debilitating exercise, the self-discipline, the overworking -- it didn’t help. It was the first time since his years being degraded in the military that he truly felt defeated, and it was so indescribably bleak. He couldn’t curb it, but he couldn’t give it time to fade. David sold opioids, hallucinogens, and stimulants. _Stimulants._ Alex never went to drugs for an escape. He just needed a lift. A little boost.

Cocaine came in a little packet. It wasn’t so easy as popping pills, he could never do it in public or on the job. But it wasn’t difficult either. All Alex needed was some time alone, a lock on a door, something to straighten out the lines, and something to suck it up with. The effort paid off. Alex no longer relied as heavily on Veratril. He still took it to neutralise his tremors, but that’s it. His marriage improved. Pam totally dropped the talk of divorce. Alex knocked off all of those ineffective coping mechanisms and Pam never smoked another cigarette again. He allowed himself more presence in Cameron’s life. Cocaine made Alex a better father. He became more reliable, in Pam’s words, and he could manage his PTSD. All it took was a bump.

That period of decency lasted maybe six months, at best. One line started failing him. Two lines started failing him. One packet started failing him. Three. Five. Overgrown fingernails clawed at the inside of every one, put every last grain of powder to use. Alex ran out of dollar bills to snort with. He needed more. Always needed more. It kept at bay that little black outline wrapping his belts and the Smith & Wesson clasped on it. It kept him from staring down rooftops and bridges for too long on the job. He didn’t have the money. Pam would notice. But he needed it. Always needed it. Pam’s curling iron fried in a frantic attempt that ended with a jolt of electricity through Alex’s gaunt body. That was why he needed drugs. Needed it. He didn’t care if she noticed. He could lie. Seven packets. Ten. More. He could afford it. Just enough to keep on your feet, Alex. Just be okay. Just to be okay, don’t overdo it. You should ease back now. Think of your family, think of Cameron. Alex wasn’t okay anymore, and he needed to be okay, for Cameron’s sake, for Pam’s sake, for the sake of his job. He needed to be okay. Stay okay. He could afford it. The rocketing price was okay. Alex was okay. He could do it. Always do it. Always do it. Always do it. But that tireless pursuit of mediocrity was what segued Alex into the real downward spiral.

Needless to say, Alex couldn’t remember much of that point in his life even if he wanted to; it was all seen through pinprick pupils and a fog that hung around every corner. He could remember the most important parts, if through a film of sorts: the day Alex was finally booted from the FBI on account of his deteriorating health; the day he branched out with David’s products; the day Cameron walked in on his own father snorting a rail; the day Pam locked him out of the house and cried watching him shudder in the rain; the day they officially did separate; the day Pamela Mahone turned back into Pamela Larson; the day she won custody over Cameron; the day Alex was introduced to the harm reduction vending machine by Fox River Homeless Youth Centre; the day Alex settled to save his money for mediocrity even if that meant he had no home to be mediocre in; and the first day he spent totally sober after all of it -- wanting to feel anger or sadness or remorse… Something human, but simply being unable to. The line between emotion and physical ailment was totally destroyed. If Alex wanted to feel bad, he’d have to take something. 

Now, he grieved the days that a pen was big enough to fit his little afflictions into.

Alex set down the cap of his pill bottle. The most vivid thing he could remember of that entire year or so was his account balance dropping two zeroes in the same month. He made good money in the FBI, and that’s really all that kept him afloat once he lost his job.

Well… That, and Michael Scofield.

One of the first drugs Alex wanted to experiment with once cocaine lost its charm was acid. Alex never went to drugs for an escape -- not until he started losing control of who knew what about his use. Pam found out what was going on when Cameron burst into tears and ran to her that day he walked in on Alex. He was too young to know what it was, but when Pam tore across the house to find her credit card, a sawed-off piece of Cameron’s missing Iron Man cup straw, and thick white smears down Alex’s lip and shirt sleeve, she blew up. That was a cat Alex couldn’t put back in the bag. He didn’t know what to do. He’d never screwed up so badly in his life. So Alex went to drugs for an escape now. He wasn’t too well-read in ‘bad trips,’ but he was a prime candidate. He would be.

Somebody else hovered in the alleyway that David normally traded in. Instead of David, there was a girl his age who sported a bold red bandana enfolding her short, dark hair. Alex had midway made up his mind to leave when he caught her pulling a plastic bag from her satchel. Seeds, of some kind. It earned her a hefty fork of cash. She was selling. Maybe she knew David, or otherwise could supply what Alex needed. He headed down the backstreet toward her. The near-invisible freckles on her pale cheeks grew darker when she smiled. And it was upon following her line of sight that Alex first saw the man she was selling to. Caucasian, with sharp eyes, a second pelt coating his polyester hoodie, and a rigid, professional attitude. He was maybe ten years Alex’s junior, but he still looked down at Alex like a wounded dog. Filthy, discombobulated, severely underweight, and poorly hiding it beneath his parka, Alex couldn’t really blame him. That man took the seeds the young woman offered and left. Alex shook it off. It wasn’t the first time another junkie gave him weird vibes. Fortunately, the girl’s name was Debra, and she was only filling her boyfriend’s spot for a few weeks while he handled something at home. She had her own clients, the man who had just left being one of them, and one or the other would be handling both sets interchangeably for the time being.

Alex bought his acid and went home, not thinking much of either encounter until about a week later, when Alex found David in the alleyway looking like he’d locked himself in a cutlery shop during an earthquake. Despite him seeming to want to avoid the conversation, Alex -- maybe the father in him, or maybe the former detective -- had to pry. His face drawled for eons of addy-fueled late nights and coffee-breathed early mornings, which was too familiar a weariness for Alex to ignore.

“Met your girlfriend last Thursday,” Alex rasped. His voice surfaced quite a bit rougher than intended -- he’d just taken his pills and his head wasn’t exactly in the game. “Real firecracker. Suits you.”

David shrugged. “That’s Debra, aight. She, uh… We ain’t moved in together yet, so… We gotta take turns watchin’ the ankle-biters. Fuckin' pain. It’s my turn for the next few weeks.”

Alex’s eyebrows knit. He’d met David when the kid was around sixteen, and that couldn’t have been three years ago. Sixteen. His once beloved teenage dealer was now a meth head with estranged children. That must’ve been what mixed up their schedules. No wonder it felt familiar.

“You’re too young for kids, Dave,” Alex muttered. David’s congenial expression faltered. “Seriously, I… Your age, your addictions, your… Occupation… You can’t do that to them.”

David briefly scrutinised his client and scoffed, “...Okay, one: that’s rich. Don’t _you_ got a kid? Two--”

Alex groggily waved off the rebuttal. “You’ll find… Make schedules, avoid trouble, focus on what matters… Fuck the rest. Make it work. Takes some getting used to. Just think about it. You know better.” 

David chewed on the inside of his cheek. That look on his face… It looked less like dismay and more like warped amusement. “You startin’ to sound like Scofield.”

“Scofield?”

“Friend of a friend. Said somethin’ like that to Debs when she asked for advice.”

“This how you guys pass the time?”

“Hmm. Good to hear it from the people who know. Scofield used to raise n’ breed the fuckers for a living.

Alex’s demeanour changed, and that’s when the kid’s mirth really pulled through. The cuts up his arm and face, the morbidly humorous smile… David didn’t want advice. He was making an excuse. When it came to the exchanges between a drug dealer and a lawman, he rarely neglected the irony. Four words and seven syllables -- all that it took to turn everything Alex knew on its head:

“Scofield runs a cattery.”

Debra, while on vacation with some family, came across a litter of five kittens abandoned in a barn. They writhed in the hay like malnourished worms, crying, too young to walk or see yet. No one else wanted to help them, so Debra took it upon herself to take them home despite her lifestyle. David got attached. Raising kittens that young was no easy task -- fresh claws, hourly screaming, broken sleep, et cetera. Everything changed when Alex sobered up. His perception shifted. David was a young man of hazy virtue, but virtue nonetheless. He wasn’t a stereotype, wasn’t just another junkie Alex would read about in a case file. He had his own rhyme and reason; one Alex was slowly coming to understand. And Alex himself -- he was too nihilistic. It was wearing down on the people around him. It was why Pam said the things that she did, why Cameron was starting to avoid him. And family… It’s such a flexible term; it is what you make it. _Who_ you make it. Pam was family. She had to be. She was all Alex had. And if she needed Alex clean, then Alex needed Alex clean.

Sobriety encouraged memory function. Alex remembered that name. Scofield. And he remembered that man he'd bumped into in the alleyway, the one buying seeds from Debra. The one with the sharp gaze and rigid attitude.

He remembered he was covered in cat fur.

When it came to identity, Alex lost his descriptors. All within the span of those two years. Alex was no longer a husband. He wasn’t a father. He wasn’t a behavioural analyst. Calling himself a lawman would be a stretch. Alex had no descriptors. None he was proud of. Alex was nothing.

On his search for a diversion, Alex abandoned both the bottle and his one-track mind. Back when he was studying psychology, he could have flipped to the chapter on addiction and found a diagram of the synapses in his own brain. His downward spiral was so textbook. Pills, liked it, took more, got hooked. Developed a tolerance, needed something more extreme to achieve the same high. Kept searching. Kept searching. Sometimes found it, and then ran into the same problem. The cycle continues. Alex lost everything. And that made sense to him. At least he could take comfort in knowing that it all went down quite predictably, because now he knew what his options were from a clinical standpoint: keep this up and die young, or get help. But somewhere in there was Michael Scofield, who was a wrench thrown in the whole fucking thing. There was no mention of Michael Scofield in _The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders._ There was no chapter on how drug abuse would lead to you a hundred and forty pages deep in your third phone book of the day, much to the concern of the librarian peering at you over her wire-rimmed glasses. There was no footnote clarifying that a junkie would occasionally set aside cash for bizarre schemes to involve themselves in a stranger’s life. There was no table of contents header titled, ‘Opiates and Homosexual Tendencies: Thanking Your New Roommate With a Furry Friend.' Alex had no psych index to refer to when he did the things he did with Michael. It barely seemed like a problem back then. One-track mind. Alex didn’t want to think about it.

Out on the balcony, the pot-stench dispersed. 

The therapy packet Sara gave Alex was divided into three different sections: physical, mental, and social. He was looking at it now, had it pinched against the handheld mirror he’d once used for cocaine. He moved on from that, so it was useless now. He’d been using it as a clipboard, though there were no promises that’s where the scratches on its chrome surface came from. The former contents of Alex’s pockets were splayed on the lawn chair behind him. There was his keychain, off of which hung a clay reminder of his son’s days in Kindergarten, the pen he forgot to return to the diner hostess, his phones, and the packet, the last few of which he brought with him onto the balcony railing. The railing wasn’t sturdy enough to support his weight by any means, but the threat of it collapsing wasn’t bothersome. It was cheap anyway. Alex was more concerned he’d lose his grip on the packet in his stupor and it’d fall two stories.

_Mental:_

_Have you been diagnosed with a mental disorder by a licensed medical professional? (Yes/No) If yes, specify:_

_Have you undergone trauma of any sort in the past? (Yes/No) If yes, specify:_

_Have you experienced suicidal/homicidal ideation in the past? Includes a desire, fantasies, and/or plotting. (Yes/No)_

_Have you recently or are you currently experiencing suicidal/homicidal ideation? (Yes/No)_

_Have you attempted suicide/homicide in the past? (Yes/No)_

_Do you experience frequent mood swings? (Yes/No)_

_Do you have or have you had an addiction? (Yes/No) If yes, specify:_

_Have you been to a therapist before? (Yes/No)_

_Are you on any prescriptions? (Yes/No) If yes, list them and the doses:..._

This process felt so superficial. Recovery, be that what it is. Sara had essentially told Alex to reevaluate why he was going to therapy if not to talk through it. Did he just want someone to know how miserable he was? Had he grown so accustomed to suffering that he’d turn away help even when he was paying to get it? In the months since the breakup with Michael, Alex had totally isolated himself. The only social interactions he’d had before that day was with David and with the cashier at the grocery store. His bridges were burned. Sacrifices for survival. 

Maybe survival was the reason he turned to Sara. Despite his previous experiences with people like her, his entire career depended on the theory that psychology could pull you from the ledge. That ledge… was tempting, but it was more of a curiosity than a real desire. Pills felt like walking underwater. Heroin was so, so peaceful. But drowning was both. They say that the moments after your body stops thrashing, you feel peace. Oxygen fails to reach your brain, you feel weightless. High. It’s a permanent solution, too. Could take away your ails, give you that blue and fulfilling bliss you’ve always craved. All of the upsides, none of the withdrawal. But Alex wasn’t sure he was ready to part with the living world yet. He hadn’t made peace with the people he hurt, and still had this urge, like he would leave so much unfinished. That need for finality must be why conclusive goodbyes are such worrying signs from suicidal people. Alex never understood that quite as lucidly as he did now. They’d made their amends, made their peace, had nothing left anchoring them to the living world. Alex hadn’t reached that point yet, but maybe he would, eventually. Until then, the crippling tenuousness of heroin would have to suffice.

Alex set the packet aside and pulled out his phone. 

Maybe it was the illusion of peace those people had made. Death isn’t naturally appealing. It’s not something you make time for. It happens when it does. You don’t get to prepare or put it off until it’s convenient. It’s not a pet project. You don’t decorate your belt before you cinch it around your neck. You don’t give a speech when you step off the chair. You don’t try to make a swelling tongue and thrashing limbs look pretty. Those people did what they had to do to trick themselves into feeling they had nothing left, and then checked out. It was a decision. They weighed their options. It wasn’t something that came naturally. There is no resolution. You do it or you don’t.

The psych major on the rickety balcony railing still jammed his ex-wife’s number into the phone.

Illusions are still comforting. Confirmation bias... It all had the same effect.

_“Hello? Who is this?”_

Alex smiled. Demanding and curious, as she always was. He didn't realise how much he missed the sound of her voice until he heard it again. “Left my other phone inside. Hey, Pam.”

The silence -- processing, probably -- went on a little too long for comfort. Pam never was the judgemental type, but she wasn’t too touchy-feely either. Sara would say his relationship with Pam was the perfect blend of the dynamic he needed and the one he sought out. She wouldn’t say why, but Alex knew.

_“It’s been a while. Where have you been?”_

“Hah, that’s, uh… Well, I think that’s a can of worms we better save for another day. How have you been? And Cameron?”

_“Cameron’s fine. Started second grade in August. He asks about you a lot.”_

Alex found himself calculating the distance between his dangling legs and the midnight pavement. Each story was fourteen feet at least. Learned that from a certain structural engineer. The balcony railing measured about halfway to the ceiling, so... Story beneath him, story he sat on -- at least 22 feet. More than three and a half times Alex’s own height. Teaching Cameron how to do math would have been fun.

_“I can’t lie, I’ve been curious too.”_

22 feet could send him to the emergency room. Probably wouldn’t kill him though. Alex shunned the thought. “It’s something I still need to come to grips with myself.”

_“I heard about the fire. It was all over the papers. That was on your street, wasn’t it?”_

Keeping a secret from Pam was virtually impossible. She had this mysterious and infuriating ability to sniff her way out of deceit. Responding one way or the other would have been futile, so Alex didn’t respond at all. Maybe that was the consequence of spending fifteen years with a detective. Some days Alex felt she would have made a better one than he did if their lives had taken a different course.

_“I didn’t read about any casualties… Was someone hurt?”_

“Pam… I’m getting help,” Alex derailed. “Just today… Or yesterday evening, I had my second therapy session. I want to be a better father. Need to be. I see that now.”

_“...Was it a child?”_

“Pam -- Jesus. No. I meant… Better person. In general. I wasn’t a good father, wasn’t a good husband to you, wasn’t… I just need to be better.”

There was some shuffling on the other end of the line. Alex hadn’t expected a single mother to bother picking up the phone this time of night. She was probably getting out of bed. But she didn’t sound groggy at all. She sighed. _“Are you clean?”_

“I’m-- I’m working on it, Pam.”

_“Okay. Hey, I want you to talk to me. That’s all.”_

Alex bit himself for snapping. She never had scolded nor condescended him in the past and she wouldn’t start now. So many questions lately, so little energy to answer them.

_“Anyway, so… Cam started a little art collection for you. It’s a year or so in the making, but I wanted it to be a surprise for if… You know, if you did get cleaned up a bit and were maybe able to come see him.”_

Alex pushed a poorly-humoured huff from his nose. “You shouldn’t get his hopes up, Pam.”

_“Don’t talk like that. He knows you’re sick, okay? He’s a smart kid. When you’re better -- when, not if -- your family hasn’t gone anywhere. You better not roll over. I know you. You’re stronger than that, Alex.”_

It sounded like a lot of wishful thinking, even from Pam’s steel tongue. He took it with a grain of salt. At least he didn’t leave his kid with a sour taste. He did miss Cameron’s art.

_“I’m gonna visit you. Next month, on the fourteenth. Mark your calendar.”_

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

_“Don’t care. It’s been like two years, I miss you.”_

“You don’t even know where I live.”

Pam laughed, once, then stopped abruptly. No more banter. It made Alex’s head hurt. He never fell out of love with her. He sort of fell into a limbo, actually. Everything she did, everything -- he could feel her thoughts, following them like braille even if he couldn’t see her. The divorce was for the best. That wouldn’t change the fact that they knew each other better than they knew themselves. Anything that time couldn’t change.

_“...Christ.”_

“Yep.”

Pam was quiet again, then decisively said, _“All the more reason to check up on you. Text me your address. ...You okay?”_

“It was months ago,” Alex switched the phone from one ear to the other to finger the pages of his packet. He could finish it within the next week. Certainly before Pam came around, and he could prove how much progress he was making with therapy. “Can’t lie, I’ve missed you too, Pam. So much.”

Pam hummed in agreement. _“I need to get up to take Cam to school in four hours. We’ll talk soon, alright? Get some sleep. And remember to send me that address. Goodnight, Alex.”_

“Okay,” he received. “Goodnight.”

And Alex was alone again, 22 feet from the floor and high on Veratril. He snapped the phone shut and set it down beside him. 

Disenchantment.

One link that the DSM-5 certainly did cover was that between addiction and suicide. An addict is six times more likely to attempt and three times more likely to be successful. Disenchantment... Because instead of embracing the pain tolerance he’d been building since the age of six; instead of humouring the fear of pain that the military had entirely diminished for him, Alex crawled back into the arms of the very psychology that people like Dr. Sara Tancredi represented. Like a coward, he returned to what came most familiar. 

Escaping the idea of having nothing to live for meant making something yourself.

At the expense of pride, Alex bought himself another month.

Just another sacrifice for survival.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These first few chapters are slow, but I'll pick up the pace soon. Thank you for reading. :)


	3. The Chasm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW // Graphic discussion of domestic abuse, homicide, homelessness, predatory behaviour, and a dog death (along with the usual)

_**Oscar "Finn" Shales** _

_**1977 - 2009** _

_**A man of a million voices; his soul is immortal and imperishable.** _

Alex doubted it.

Or, would have, back in 2008.

Oscar Shales was barely a man, first and foremost. He was a criminal; a savage killer who seesawed between barbarism and remorse. And though you could call him a _'man of a million voices'_ \-- being those which allegedly urged him to commit his crimes -- Alex wasn’t convinced. According to the case file, Shales had an extreme case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. This was indicated by a lack of fingerprints despite the otherwise careless wealth of evidence, recurring patterns of three, and the washing and hoarding of his victim's hair postmortem. The bureau theorised his motivations had to do with upbringing, though this was never confirmed nor repudiated as Shales was set on convincing the public that he'd completely lost touch with reality. The narrative only shifted from neurotic to psychotic after the press got ahold of the case, with Shales writing nonsensical messages and cries for help on the wall in his immaculate, blood-trailed handwriting. Alex himself held that OCD was too tame an ailment to be considered 'insane'. The press wasn’t too keen on that assertion.

Alex reconsidered the profile, of course. Nothing changed. Joliet, Prison City, magnet to hybristophiles -- they didn’t romance the _'fabulist with a poor upbringing and socially-crippling OCD'_ narrative nearly as much as _'sexual psychotic tormented by malicious voices'._ Lucky Finn, having upgraded from nothing more than a face on the news and a name with a bounty to another tall tale in Joliets' dozens. Nothing more than a number in a closed case file.

Nothing more than twelve bullets discharged from Alex's own Smith & Wesson.

Shales had killed eighteen women over the course of three months and beat four others within inches of their lives. And then he lied to spare himself the consequences. The thought of his sentence being reduced was enough to make anyone's blood boil. Any chance at real closure for those women’s families would have been trashed over some bogus insanity plea. But Alex knew he did the right thing. He did what anyone else would have done. Because anyone else would have shot a defenseless man in the back. Anyone else would have proceeded to unload the magazine on him even after he'd dropped to the floor and thrown his hands up and begged for his life. Anyone else would have smothered the humanity, jarred, ringing in their ears. Anyone else would have regressed at the recoil’s shock -- anyone else would have been overwhelmed by images of blood-stained kitchen tiles and bullet-stippled photographs and ligature-marked necks and 6'2" figures bashing their jaw with the butt of a rifle and the knees they hugged to their chest on the third shelf of the hallway linen closet and the bloody bite marks in their tiny white knuckles and the anxiety-inducing talk of divorce and the court case that left them in their father's care and the grief and fury in that man's eyes every time he drank too much and saw nothing in Alex but a jilted funhouse mirror, and the long, lonely, scary nights they spent staring out a starlit window wondering where on Earth Mommy went because she was the only person who could make any of this go away. Anyone else would have mindlessly contracted their index finger eleven more times at the body on the floor. Anyone else would have realised only after the twelfth that Shales had stopped breathing around the fourth. 

Anyone else would have related those twelve bullets to each grueling year they'd spent with their chins to their chests and their sleeves to their wrists.

Alex’s eyes lifted from the tombstone. Shales wasn't his father. It only took a month or so for Alex to realise just how little sense it made to compare Oscar Shales; a whimsical liar with skin raw from excessive washing, to his own father; a blunt domestic-abuser with callouses so thick that he probably couldn't even feel himself backhanding Alex.

But it made sense for those hazy couple of seconds, and that made the difference between Shales being locked up and his trail suddenly going cold.

Alex was standing on a hollow grave.

The bureau moved on after the case was left stagnant for three years. Alex never did. The skeletons in his closet made for good company.

On the bright side, it made the Alex's purgatory feel a little less irrational. PTSD prescriptions taught him harder lessons than any court ruling could dare try.

"...Alex?"

The inky sky grew pale. Sunrise, and Alex already drew more traffic to the cemetery than Shales alone ever had. Alex found the voice in a man among the sea of gravestones who looked to have risen from one of them only moments earlier. He was pale, disheveled... Familiar. "Who... Haywire?"

The man lifted his head and smiled sheepishly. Definitely Haywire. The clash of austere eyebrows and childish glow gave him away. If Joliet was infamous for its half-baked rumours, then Charles "Haywire" Patoshik was infamous for having murdered his parents. Of course, he wouldn't hurt a fly, but 'schizoaffective disorder' looked daunting on paper, so his sinless nature didn't matter. He was crucified and isolated from society. At least, that's how Alex figured he ended up mingling with a bunch of junkies. They met on either side of a recurrently sleep-deprived Debra Jean-Belle and walked away together when Haywire mentioned the Fox River Homeless Youth Centre, which provided free, sterile needles via a vending machine. Conveniently, the group collected across the street from that shelter, along the back of an abandoned fire department. Haywire invited Alex in. The rest was history.

"It's good to see you," Haywire mused, patting Alex's jacketed shoulder as he rounded him. "But how terrible to happen here..."

Alex shrugged, shunning deadweight and guilt. "Maybe. You visiting Larry?"

Haywire nodded. His previous stubble had grown into a lush, curly mess around his mouth. His face was solemn, but its usual livelihood fought through. "Miss him. Gets real bad, too, around Christmastime."

The holidays were a time of family for most, but only indignation and gloom for Alex and Haywire, who had spent many under the same tree. Their own families being absent if not abusive throughout their lives, they were all they really had. Well, with the addition of the other junkies and Larry, Haywire’s dog. Those winter blues only worsened when they returned from holiday shopping one year to find the Collie limp on the floor, wasted on grapefruit balms and unsupervised Xanax bars. It was shortly after the funeral that Alex committed to the mess of his love life and disappeared. He hadn't spoken with Haywire since, but knowing he was one of his closest friends, Alex really should have made some attempt at contact. At least around Christmastime -- which now apparently included early-October cemetery sunrises.

"Who's this? 'Oscar'?"

The name spoken aloud sounded like nails on a chalkboard. It was one Alex had kept hidden away in the back of his mind for long enough that he forgot at times that it was one others could interact with without prompt.

"Good man I knew, once upon a time. You remind me of him."

"How so?"

Rumours and murder, probably.

"You're immortal. 'A man of an imperishable soul' ...And a great beard."

Haywire twinkled. "I try my best."

Their shadows grew more opaque on the headstone, the shape of Alex's head now painted between the 'r' of Oscar and the 'l' of Shales. Yet, for all the effort put into that inscription, its cursives and capitals all scrawled out the wrong damn name. Alex didn't come to mourn Shales. He came to mourn himself. He came to mourn the man he lost the minute he pulled the trigger and the family he snuffed with every twitch of his finger. Alex mourned the troubled criminal he made and the horrific father he became.

"How are the others?" Alex asked.

Haywire waited for elaboration. Upon receiving none, he glanced at Alex. "The others?"

"Yeah. Nika, Gretchen, Seth and them."

"Ohh..." a flash of emotion ricocheted from every feature of his face. Or it could have been a twitch. "Eh... There are no 'others' anymore. We got busted a year or so after you left. JPD. Everyone who wasn't jailed scattered. Haven't heard from them since."

A lingering guilt returned. The others weren’t his responsibility. He had to remember that.

"Do you... Do you know who got jailed?"

"Just... Roland did, but he's young, so... Uh, Gretchen did, Lechero did... And Theodore too, but not Seth. I don't know for how long, though. I'm scared to go back."

...Theodore? All of those names rung a bell except for Theodore. What did Theodore have to do with Seth? If their orgy of pharmaceuticals was a family, that would make Alex the father of Seth, a then-fifteen-year-old runaway, and Seth the son of Alex, a man estranged from his biological child. As ironic as it was for a teenager’s junkie father to be skeptical of another junkie’s relation to that same teenager, Alex was. Seth was reclusive. He never really made friends. Who in the 90’s named a kid Theodore anyway? "There are other ways to find their sentences. Who's Theodore?"

Haywire's lips pursed, and that's precisely when Alex realised Seth was in it deep. "That's right," the campy-haired man murmured. "He showed up after you left, huh?"

Alex really was a lousy father. His tongue ran over his teeth. He was glad Pam kept custody.

"That's, uh... Huh."

"Haywire."

The younger man stretched out his scruffy neck, revealing a series of inexplicable crescent bites in his beard's wake. Alex flinched. "We should take a walk together -- you and I, Alex."

"…Is Seth okay? Who is Theodore?"

Haywire's palm touched Alex's shoulder again to lead him away from the now irrelevant headstone. Alex smacked him away. "We're not leaving this cemetery until you answer me. Who is Theodore?"

"Seth's at my house," Haywire reassured, dodging the bigger question yet again. "Nika too. They're safe."

That was far from comforting.

"And who is Theodore? Why is their safety in question? What did he do?"

Haywire raised his hands in partial-surrender, partial-signal for Alex to dial it back. "It's a long story and I have plenty of time to explain. Just, please don't yell at me. Let's... Let's go take a walk." His eyebrows hopped nervously when his friend’s manner lost no intensity. Alex drew a deep breath through the nostrils.

"Fine. Come on." 

Haywire had to trot to keep up, yet still managed the breath to dive into it. As for Alex's first two questions: Theodore Bagwell was an uncouth southerner in his late-forties who'd taken Alex's place as Seth's paternal figure after he left. Supposedly to keep Seth off the streets, Theodore freed up a guest bedroom and invited him in. As for the integrity of that offer, it was safe to say Alex would have sooner stapled his tongue to a moving train than ever invited a non-related minor to live with him. The thought alone was enough to make his skin crawl -- and that was before Haywire got around to addressing Seth's X addiction, which, interestingly enough, didn't come to be until Theodore did. Even Haywire, the most naïve human being Alex had ever met, agreed that the relationship was uncomfortable to think about. However, with Theodore running an expansive cartel, there wasn't much room for anyone to step in. They took advantage of his services and prayed the best for Seth.

Alex surmised God wasn't too keen on heeding the prayers of a bunch of felons, but maybe that was just him. He refrained from decking his dear old friend.

It was once a nightly routine for Seth to stick his name into the youth shelter’s lottery. The nights he got in, he took his best advantage of it. The nights he didn't, he slept outside with his friend Nika. Nika was fairly young as well, but too old for Fox River to take in and not old enough to mother Seth. Alex took them under his wing, visiting at least once a day to make sure all was well with them and the coterie they'd joined. Obviously, Alex's absence and Theodore's presence rudely disrupted this schedule. When Seth moved in, he only ever visited on the bittersweet Sunday mornings that he managed to escape Theodore’s churchgoing. Those Sunday mornings were what revealed Seth’s rapid decline. From the average middle-class runaway, he quickly lost what remained of his body weight. His ribs cut through his shirt and his brittle nails yellowed. His speech slurred, his tongue lagged behind his staggered thoughts. His eyes, spring sky and once so fuelled with verve, had sunken. He stared idly through everyone who approached him and always seemed to be distantly following something that no one else could see. He became completely unrecognisable after about two months. Luckily for Nika, Haywire had the audacity to claim she'd already moved in with him when Theodore offered another room to her. Thanks to that split-second decision, Nika had been sleeping in Haywire's room for the past year-and-a-half and Haywire had been sleeping in the guest bedroom. 

Theodore's creepy gambit ended with the bust. Seth ended up moving in with Haywire as well; an extremely risky move considering his Amber Alert status. He ate in rare binges. He rarely left the house. He absolutely refused to acknowledge the entire year of his life spent under Theodore's roof.

"...I've done my best to keep them safe, really," Haywire promised, "but Nika still mostly takes care of things 'cause I can't really handle teenagers. Or, any person, I guess. They're well-behaved, but it's not like Larry where I just have to feed them and play with them and let them out every so often. They brush their teeth and wear people clothes and come and go whenever they want. And they cook. Like, with the stove and everything. Sometimes I feel like I'm _their_ dog."

Alex's pace, which had regulated over the course of the conversation, came to a halt. Haywire's accorded. They now stood beneath the outskirts of the cemetery's sylvan canopy, just outside of and overlooking the city. Oscar Shales was a long way south now, but he’d always feel just upstream wherever Alex swam. "But you're doing your best, and it sounds like you're doing it well. I'm proud of you."

“Oh, you know… Agh,” Haywire beamed, a dorky grin spreading across his cheeks. “Things are a little tense though. Nika’s been spending her weekends someplace else recently and Seth is still on X. It’s… Not as bad as it was, but still bad.”

“How bad?”

"Eh... A hundred milligrams per dose now, give or take. Only once a month, too, like clockwork. But that's better than the two hundred he used to drop every week, I think."

For the most part, Alex only grew dependent on substances with physical withdrawal effects. Benzos and their incessant juddering of his limbs, cocaine and its assault on his sleep cycle, heroin and its refusal to keep anything in his stomach for longer than an hour. For Alex, addiction was near inevitable when ignoring a bad habit formed tangible obstacles in his day-to-day life. However, Alex had dedicated his life’s work to understanding the human brain; knowing how to read it, knowing how to trick it. Any psychological craving was just a bias away from pushing. Hence, he didn't quite understand how Seth could get addicted to ecstasy, of all things. 

"Just don't say anything when you see him. He's been through a lot and I don't want him to feel bad."

That concern was valid. Alex understood. But more than anything else, he was struck with the phrasing of that request. _"...When?"_

"Anytime! Even tomorrow works," Haywire chirped obliviously. "Just let me give everyone a heads-up first."

There was no way Alex had misheard him. _When,_ not if. The possibility of being blamed by no one but himself briefly occurred to Alex, but it felt selfish. He didn’t deserve to see them. But it’d be an egregious lie if he were to deny his desire to. "I've got places to be today anyhow. Maybe this weekend. You still live on Percy?”

The town they overlooked felt a little less bleak now that Alex knew he still had a friend in it. Haywire Patoshik, the hopelessly loyal. Maybe Joliet wasn't all liars and hypocrites after all.

The two said their farewells, Alex dismissing himself from what would have been an uncomfortable and potentially painful embrace now that his skin was beginning to crawl under his hoodie. The brief moment of peace was over. Now, he returned to the home of withdrawal. Alex had gathered all of his needles and tossed them before leaving the apartment that morning, but that didn't stop the horrifically vivid sensation of ten thousand tiny insects writhing their pincers through the track marks at the bend of Alex's elbow. No unsubstantial sense of accomplishment would change the fact that he was only changing routes of administration.

Slamming was dangerous, but if Alex were to claim at this point that snorting was any less so, it'd be a stretch. Since quitting coke, Alex realised just how radical its toll had been on his nasal cavity. He spent the better nights with the nozzle of a saline bottle stuffed up his nostril, but more often spent the following mornings swabbing the bathroom clean of mucoid blood and bile. Luckily, the switch from cocaine to heroin was long enough ago that nosebleeds were only periodic now, but the possibility of eroding the tissue from his nostrils wasn't exactly the first thought on Alex's mind when he finished collapsing both cephalic veins and had a full-blown panic attack trying to figure out how he was going to fish for another -- most likely a deeper one in an unfamiliar part of his body -- while his hands rattled like a pair of socially-anxious maracas. Switching ROA's seemed like the next logical step at the time. Chasing the dragon wasn't an option. Somewhere between a cigarette accompanying Pam’s spirit breaking and the common sight of Michael’s face through smoke clouds put him off the idea. It was visceral. More visceral than withdrawal. So visceral, Alex would rather take the powder.

The universe had set up a series of transitions, ending one long, gruelling chapter and submitting something fresh. For too long, Alex had been caught in limbo. Between death and birth, the chasm in a cycle. And that symbolism could do its damnedest to entice, but it was up to Alex to turn the page.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive the underwhelming conclusion, I had some unexpected struggles with this chapter but wanted to get it posted in a semi-timely manner. I'll come back to fix it sometime.
> 
> As some of you know, I started this story on Wattpad and decided to move it because Wattpad is becoming more and more of a corporate shithole. However! That means I had to give Mary Jane a cover. On Twitter, I have threads where I promote my stories, and that includes the cover of Mary Jane along with a couple of other edits made in the same style (granted, it's low Q, I made it years ago. looks a lot better on the phone). If you want to see it, follow [this link!](https://twitter.com/iviesfluoresce/status/1276034690034462720) :)


	4. Corpse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW // Disturbing, disorienting, unsanitary. Graphic descriptions of LSD/heroin's effects, withdrawal symptoms, panic attacks, bugs... And while there is no torture or sexual violence, some vocabulary/imagery used about halfway through the chapter may be distressing. Take care, be safe!

Some drugs are like cake.

Occasional, delectable, and you forget how much you enjoy them until they come around again. If it’s been a few years, you kind of laugh at the thought. Cake is just spongy, has no real nutritional value, and it’s unnecessarily sweet. At best, it doesn’t do your body much good, but there are so many exciting memories attached to it. You swore you could eat it every meal when you were younger… But if you found the chance to test that theory, you were proven wrong rather quickly. Maybe two weeks of that routine was enough to take cake off of the menu for the rest of the year. The delight fades, the memories aren’t routinely paired with it, and you’re left with a strong mushy lump that your tongue has to cram down your throat like a wet sock. You gag at the thought. But, in time, you’d warm up to it again -- cake is alright in moderation. Your boyfriend hands you a slice at his birthday party and you head off to the ceiling’s ledge, let the pleasantries fill your foggy form again. Euphoria, into your nostrils on a nightly summer breeze. This calm relief. Peace. Alright in moderation, great in good company. It made you feel closer to him than you really were.

Alex was about an hour into his acid trip.

He didn’t take too much -- just enough to warp the features of the hostess’s face. Trying to keep his inebriation under wraps amplified the experience though. She blew bohemian breaths, campsites in the forest, berry-crushed blush. Their conversation moved too quickly for Alex to follow. It was fascinating things they exchanged. So fascinating that they looped back and over it again and again. Alex caught himself repeating the same thoughts if not rapidly losing interest and switching up the topic every few words. He kept quiet unless called upon, rresponded at what civil paces he could match. The hostess didn’t seem to notice his blown-up pupils or the way his fork jabbed at his plate as if spearing its deep-fried prey straight from the ocean. For such a colourful woman, it almost surprised Alex that she couldn’t sense the synaesthesia lurking along too. Lilac intrigue, her voice’s variety dizzied Alex. She spoke like a rainbow, or like a flowerbed; sweetened daubs of vanilla ice cream on Alex’s hazelnut tongue. He wouldn’t let himself stare for too long, but she was a hundred times more appetising than the crustacean meal he mindlessly stomached.

"...Thanks for offering yesterday anyway," Alex measured between bites. “Might’ve accepted if it weren’t for… The food. The smell.”

Right.

Alex had been winding some tale about ritualistic travelling and fasting… Not unlike the Muslim Ramadan. The hostess bought it. Alex had a spiritual mission to find gratitude in the privileges life afforded him and lived as a sort of transient to experience the world from the angle of the less fortunate. As a result, he was skipping meals, looked dirty, et cetera. Now that some symbolically significant date had passed, Alex came to the nearest eatery. The diner.

“That’s alright, I totally understand. Say, I forgot to ask your name last I saw you,” she inked in indigo.

“Alex,” he said simply, then fished through his pocket to retrieve the very nice black pen she’d lent him some time prior. “Speaking of memory…”

The hostess had cold fingers. Not cold -- cool. Like autumn. Like everything outside, red and orange and sepia fingertips, complemented by a tepid gaze. “I was wondering where this sucker went. I'm Felicia, by the way.”

_Felicia._

'Felicia' sounded like the annoyingly soft type of sweater your scruffy face envies the texture of. Alex liked it. Felicia, like _felíz,_ happy. Happiness. Or _felix,_ fortune. They had flimsy first impressions, but Alex really did have a good feeling about her. Sympathetic, easygoing, affable.

"That's a great name."

Her cheeks chalked cherry. It went nicely with her complexion. And her beige shrug. Takes talent to make beige look good. Alex caught himself staring again and reverted his gaze downward. It'd been so long since he'd last eaten a proper meal... Well, he couldn't really remember the details. His lifestyle dissuaded an appetite.

"You look like you've got something on your mind, Alex."

Shocker. He was tripping harder than Alice and barely keeping it together. "I get that a lot. Resting face."

Pastel snickers. Alex put down his fork. A pattern of some kind oozed from Felicia’s face, like a honeyish waterboard, enwrapping the entire quiet universe from the space between her very thin eyebrows. She had a buzzcut, but the halo spiralling her skull silhouetted an afro. When she shook her head, it shook with her. "I had the pleasure of seeing your resting face when you dropped your glass. This isn't it."

"Okay… You got me."

Felicia watched him. It sank to Alex’s stomach. Something shifted. She turned blue. Grey. “Your folks in town for the festival?”

“Mmm. Mother left when I was young, father beat me like a harp seal. I’d leave Joliet if they came around.”

The patterns lingered behind Alex’s eyelids, dissipating without Felicia’s outline to contain them. They internalised, vanished from his vision and undulated his open lungs instead. The festival was for fall -- a recent local tradition, involved flower crowns and arts and crafts and discounts and games. There was a carnival set up in the main plaza on the years weather permitted. Alex had never bothered with it. Too busy personally. But he did enjoy the thematic sales.

"...Oh."

Alex smiled slowly and opened his eyes. Felicia was staring into them intently. Searching them. His soul. She looked preoccupied. Alex continued eating. "Sorry. Having a weird day. How about you? You going to the festival?"

Her gaze pulled apart every particle of Alex’s skin, and that was about the length of the first encounter he had with her since breaking that glass. Between his own affairs, he came around, visiting with her, getting to know her. She was new to Joliet, had been around a few months, too busy since the move to really get her feet in the ground. Based on the things she shared about the transition, Alex couldn’t work out why she’d want to come to Illinois. It obviously wasn’t for a job, and although she did know a couple nearby that she spent a lot of her time with, they didn’t seem vital enough to have brought her from across state lines. Alex never explicitly asked. Actually, most of their conversations were about Alex, whether because she was truly that intrigued by him or because she could see he hadn’t spoken to someone new in a while. He didn’t mind. The way he saw it, you allow insight to an entirely new world with each person you meet. Whatever you deem necessary for them to know or not to know. And they just take you at your word.

Therapy had been going well. Alex and Sara still hadn’t spoken about anything too personal; it was still cat pictures and sarcasm; but he was definitely letting his walls come down. One thing that made it marginally bearable was that at the same time as Sara was getting a better picture of Alex, Alex was getting a better picture of her. She was genuinely passionate about helping her clients. And despite (or maybe thanks to) the annoying elitist thing her profession made her prone to, her ability to keep civil in the face of Alex’s snark was impressive. They managed to lay out a vague picture of what Alex’s decline looked like. His divorce, his progression through substances, the works. But while Sara was engrossed with Alex, Alex was studying her back. Sara had a habit. After watching her repeat this gesture about ten times during the same session, he realised it wasn’t just a habit. It was a tell. Whenever Alex mentioned hospitals or related equipment, the pen in Sara’s right hand would make its way across her body and dig into the left-hand side of her notes. Each and every paper she used had that dark splotch of ink in the same place. Even the clipboard alone had it -- a sign it was a quirk common enough in the past to have bled through papers. IVs, EKGs, tourniquets… The first thing that came to mind was drugs, but Alex was a bit biased in that regard. She could’ve been ill at some point, or maybe been in a traumatic accident. She didn’t have any visible incapacities or ailments as far as Alex had noticed. No signs around the office pointed to a chronic condition, and based on the contents of the wastebasket Alex peered into upon exiting the room, it was nothing she needed treatments for while at work. It wasn’t any of Alex’s business. Just curiosity. Maybe she dug that pen so deeply into the paper because she was aware of and similarly aggravated with Alex’s complex, Alex’s need to know her, Alex’s desire to pick her apart.

Frankly, there were too many possibilities to try and narrow it down any further than that, so Alex settled to pay it more attention in the future.

He'd been talking to Pam more often lately, rebuilding that bridge. They called twice or three times each week, touching base. He hadn’t heard her voice so up-spoken since sending Cameron off to his first day of kindergarten. Alex thought about those days quite a bit in his isolation. Thought about the days when things were manageable and Alex had not the faintest clue what was to come. Early marriage, early career, kissing Pam’s forehead when he told her he’d take care of the baby’s mewling. The nice things, or even the things that seemed bad back then. Things that felt so insignificant now. And Alex thought of it the day he sat on Percy Court, under a tree’s shady overhang and buried from sight of the adjacent house. The patio there was bordered by ornate stones as opposed to the overgrowths slithering up Alex’s jeans. Through a wide, unblinded window, Alex could see two of that house’s three residents. Nika, whose hair was now well-kempt and bore highlights Alex had never seen before. Her clothes were clean -- didn’t even look wrinkled from where Alex sat. She held a cord of some sort between two outstretched arms and requested help from a boy who would’ve been totally unrecognisable if it weren’t for the hallmark ginger hair. Seth had grown quite a bit since Alex last saw him, but still stood just shorter than Nika. His face slimmed out, his hairstyle changed, and he even had a bit of untended-to scruff under the chin. But Seth had always possessed that same great smile. The cord came into and out of sight, then canisters, stuffed animals, and these little multi-coloured balls that the two tossed between one another. That was the happiest Alex had ever seen them. And he really could’ve sat there for hours, just watching them, happier in that one moment than they’d ever been in the year Alex had spent with them before. And they were clean. At least, they moved at a natural pace, caught every ball thrown, and surely looked much healthier than they had before. 

Re-entering people’s lives was selfish. Coming and going when it’s convenient for you. Abandoning dependants and showing up again as if you’d never walked away. And that keychain Alex’s thumb studied reminded him of that. Blood is such an anchor. But Seth and Alex shared none. There was no history beyond that single year that Alex had needed a son and Seth had needed a father. There was no reason for Alex to shake up his life again. No reason to ruin that happiness. None other than selfishness.

Between fervent voyeurism, Alex slept. A lot. So much that his back always hurt. His eyes persistently felt dry. He felt unmotivated, tired, stagnant. Sleeping was healthier than drugs. That’s how he justified it.

It really did occur to Alex in his wakeful moments how alone he’d been. How absent. How much time he lost. Wandering, never really heading. Hearing, never really listening. Alive, but never really living. And in that existential haze, he’d stumble into the bathroom and hang his head over the sink, hang his head until he lost so much blood he was too dizzy to stand, and had to slink down around the toilet bowl instead. Consciousness was a lightswitch, but never worked so perfectly nowadays. Red smudges under his bluish fingers, patterns on the porcelain might’ve been metaphors or coincidences if he tilted his head. Desperate clots were tangible, sprayed when they itched too much, made a mess of his bathroom. Between suffering and sleep, Alex lost so much time. It was different now than before, because he knew these people, had them now. Could’ve spent that time heading. Listening. Living.

Some night rolled around during that toilet-side routine that Alex gained the sense to pinch his nose with some toilet paper. He held his phone, the screen smudged with blood, and the speakers crackling faintly. A voice, stressed. Tired. The wavelengths were so tightly wound, felt caught on Alex’s eardrums, ricocheted back and forth. Alex had to hold the phone a good few inches away. Distantly, he had the thought that he could die like this someday. In the bathroom, blood loss, or an overdose. Fall and hit his head. That is, if he couldn’t regularly find the sense to clot the bleeding. The heroin was wearing off. That was why he was coming clearer now. His heartbeat was picking up, extremities resensitised… And remembered that it was about two in the morning on October 14. In five hours, Pam would be knocking on his front door. Alex’s state was pathetic. He couldn’t let her see him like this. Not ten minutes ago, his hair was draped like a matted dead animal into the toilet, swimming in his own vomit. His nose had stopped bleeding finally. He dropped the paper into the bowl and flushed, then dragged his cumbersome body up against the side of the bathtub. He smelled so bad. His wet hair clung to his face. It reeked. Still, he considered another hit. Bad idea. But he didn’t really care. His heartbeat was speeding up, but it wasn’t regulating. Five hours wasn’t nearly enough time to come down and straighten everything out. God, for the last few days, he’d completely forgotten about Pam coming to visit. He could barely keep himself upright. And he was so sleepy. It felt like he hadn’t slept in years. He couldn’t keep his eyes open -- the lights were getting so bright now. He could practically see the disappointment, the pity in Pam’s face. The grimace, the sympathetic disgust. The disgusting sympathy. He had to get up. But his heartbeat was pounding so loud now, so loud now… He pressed the source of buzzing electricity to his ear now, listened now. Lived. 

_“I wanted… Is now a bad time?”_

_“Hello? No… Yeah, I hear you. Yeah.”_

And Alex, if he could swallow the foam he chewed on, he could play a game of telephone with himself. Parrot similar syllables back and forth with that reddish-orange void that so embraced him in that horrible, pulsating warmth. It was so hard to breathe, claustrophobic. Alex was a maggot reborn, a squirming pupa. Exhaustion rotted away at his stringy muscle. No matter what he did, he couldn’t leave. He’d be trapped in this cocoon forever.

_“You sound so far away.”_

_“Why did I call? No. Sorry.”_

It was orgasmic. Paralysing. And he could see everything, sense everything, but he couldn’t leave it, couldn’t make it stop. Alex could handle so much -- the crawling and the vomiting and the bleeding and the emptiness and that horrible, deluging dread, but that upset was nothing compared to this endless deprivation. He could focus on nothing. Hear nothing. Feel the solitary rumble of his throat, but sense naut beyond his own mortality. This second skin enveloping him. This emetic climax.

_“Leave me alone. Who are you?”_

_“I want to be left alone.”_

He did it to himself. All of it. The light was so bright now, penetrated the width of his eyelids, camera flashes of his frontal lobe. Why did he keep doing it? It never got better. Never felt more euphoric. Hardly felt euphoric at all. Alex could handle so much. That horrific stench, the tiles, of Alex’s body and its functions. There and gone, invasive and hollow, deafening, and even though he couldn’t hear it, he could remember handing himself to muscle memory, to just do what he was so used to, move the way he always did. Mumbling, immobile, muttering something so brash and intense, something that gagged you. Felt like _‘mickle,’_ but filled your mouth more, _‘mickle,’_ but vulgar and long, too rancid to keep on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t spit it out, so you swallow it and never let it back up.

“...I’m gonna puke.”

…When you can’t find the word you’re looking for, just stop talking.

It makes something so typically impressive sound so delicate. Doesn’t it? Like a butterfly’s wings. Like something small and lovely. 

But it felt like sandpaper on your tongue. It licked you until you bled and left you with an affectionate rash. It’s horrendous. You don’t want it anymore. _Mickle,_ but long, like a swishing tail. Fetid, like dead things left at your front door. Vagile and voracious and vulgar. Fetid, like a mass of Alex on the bathroom floor, writhing.

At some point, Alex lost consciousness. It was probably a good thing; he was greeted back by the headache his own voice had inflicted. Morning light slowly crept down the wall, even just its reflection fierce on Alex’s retinas. A fog hung around him, his skull deadweight on his shoulders. Memories of the previous night were fleeting and Alex didn’t have the stamina to chase them. That smell hung in his nose. He couldn’t put his finger on what exactly it was. Worse still, he didn’t care to know.

_“...Sir? Are you still there?”_

Alex craned his neck to peer at the phone. _Michael,_ read the caller ID. Like _‘mickle,’_ but with a frequency distinctly female. Alex snapped the flip-phone shut.

The morning started there, at around 6 AM. Alex pushed himself onto his feet and tried to clean up to the best of his ability, splashing water in his face, running a brush through his hair, and changing into less mysteriously-stained clothes. All that oversleeping as of late had done nothing to help the dark circles under his eyes. Today from yesterday or the day before that, Alex lived awake in dreams or stupor or sober listlessness, and the days weren’t ended by nights, as the planet’s rotations were undefined by the rest of the universe. It was always five o’ clock somewhere. Or eleven, or fourteen, or twenty-one. He couldn’t tend to much outside of his own appearance before the doorbell rang.

On his way there, Alex did his best to pluck around, tidy what he could. The house wasn’t _too_ too bad -- embarrassing considering he was supposed to be expecting company, but nothing obscene. He’d just have to keep Pam in the kitchen area. When Alex opened the door, it felt like no transition at all.

“Hey, Alex.” Pam’s familiarly warm smile fell into something grim within heartbeats. Alex must’ve looked like he’d aged twenty years in the very few since they’d last seen each other. It certainly felt like he had. But he prized the brief moment of glee before she really took him in. Pam's entire journey into the living room, her attention didn’t falter from Alex. He shut the door and leaned against it, criticising every detail of the apartment around Pam while she preoccupied herself with the eyesore of her ex-husband. Eventually, she seemed to snap out of it and avert her gaze. She wasn’t trying to rub it in. Alex knew that. But it didn’t make him feel any better.

“How’s Cam?”

Pam’s eyes rose from wherever they’d fallen and scanned the room absentmindedly. “He’s… Uh, he’s good. Making… Friends alright and everything. You know him.”

Alex sighed and pushed himself off the door, heading into the kitchen. Pam followed.

“It’s… Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s been… What, four, five months that you’ve lived here? And…” She peered around the kitchen, which was totally bare and unused aside from a couple empty aluminum cans and the refrigerator Alex leaned into. He turned and handed her a water bottle. She held it close to her body like she was expecting someone to steal it. Or she didn’t want anything to touch it. “It’s so… Bare. Doesn’t look like anyone lives here.”

“I don’t,” Alex replied, “not really. I hate the smell, so I don’t stick around.”

A humourless smile pulled at Pam’s cheeks. “Yeah, it is a little skunky.”

“Last residents smoked pot. Try as I might, I can’t get rid of it.”

“Right.”

Pam’s guard fell as they spoke some more, and it really started to feel like she no longer saw in Alex’s face whatever it was that had shocked her so badly by the front door. That familiar resolve returned her demeanour; the more she spoke of Cam, the more that stoic maternity solidified. Cameron reminded her of Alex in a lot of ways. He had the attitude, the intellect. He knew Alex was sick and that he couldn’t be around them for a while, but he still asked about him all the time. Between anecdotes and sly glances, Pam found time for observations. She never spoke them aloud. In fact, she never paused too long between any of those anecdotes, but Alex could follow her line of sight and figure out what was going on inside of her head. The water bottles, like the one she held: Alex had been reusing them like crazy, none of them matched, she hoped Alex bought at least the one in her hand. The backpack: Alex’s constant travelling, the very little he salvaged from the house fire. The clothes inside of the bag: the belt next to it was misplaced. Is that blood on the belt? Maybe Pam didn’t see that. But she definitely saw the scratched up hand mirror. And the pill bottles, but she knew what those were for. Alex’s PTSD hadn’t magically disappeared over the course of his other struggles. The bedroom was empty aside from a trash can by the door. Alcohol swabs inside of it -- probably sanitisation, right? Alex was known for his cleanliness. And that spoon could have been burnt on the stove or something.

That was a horrible stretch. Jesus. A sharp breath revitalised Alex when Pam turned toward the bathroom.

“...And this ‘Dede’ girl, cute little thing. I think Cam might--”

“Wait,” Alex grabbed her. Pam stopped, her eyes moving from the hand on her arm to the face of her ex, a sort of dangerous or wary gleam in them. Alex loosened his grip a little and let her go. That stare didn’t falter. Alex couldn’t read that expression. He’d never seen anything like it in Pam before. It wasn’t threatening -- quite the opposite. A guarded sort of… Fear? Caution, but colder. More Pam. “...Sorry. Listen, Pam, I know what… I know what it looks like. I know, but it’s not-- it’s not what you think. I _am_ getting better, I swear.”

The stare softened, then averted, and Pam wordlessly continued to the bathroom. As soon as her sneakers hit the tile, the back of her wrist met her upper lip. That rancid smell that Alex had remembered from last night, it still hung in there. Blood in the sink, mostly washed away due to that morning’s touch-up, and the spatters that missed the toilet bowl -- thick streaks of beige and yellow down the sides of the toilet, spotting the wall. The flip-phone still laid on the floor. Pam looked at Alex over her shoulder, then back at the mess.

“I threw out my needles about a week ago. Pam.”

The woman turned and pushed past Alex’s form in the doorway without so much as looking at him again. Alex rubbed his face. He shouldn’t have been expecting anything different. He shut the door before meeting Pam again in the kitchen, where she was draining her water bottle like it was her first after days in the desert. Alex winced and leaned against the counter.

“My therapist…” he trailed off. Then decided not to lie. That was the last thing Pam deserved. Therapy was one big blanket Alex could use to cover all of his issues; use to claim he was getting better even though it truly was nothing more than a quiet place to think aloud. “I’m ready to face my issues. I _am_ facing them. And it’s not pretty, I know that, but… I didn’t expect it to be. I don’t… I don’t think you expected it to be either.”

Pam screwed the cap back onto the bottle in time, and again, held it against her body the same way she had when he first gave it to her. And she just stared at him. Alex thought he’d love this. The feeling Pam’s gaze brought him. But she looked disturbed, beyond anything Alex had ever imagined. It was like she’d seen a rotting corpse in that bathroom. Maybe she had.

“You’ve… I-I… How long have you been alone, Alex?”

Alex’s mouth hung open, but no response surfaced.

“...Two years? You’ve been dealing with this -- all of this -- by yourself?”

When you do shameful things, you should feel shame. Alex felt shame. “…Only a few months.”

The expression on Pam’s face didn’t look too promising. Actually, it was a reflection of Alex’s own. Pam accepted his obduracy same as she ever did, leaning against a countertop and averting her eyes. “Since the cat, I assume?” And before Alex could look too bewildered by that, she added, “I saw the collar in your bag. Cute. And a pet’s good for you, but it’s not enough.”

Briefly, that felt like a good segue into the truth. But Pam had an undeniable point and the truth would add little to the conversation.

“Therapy’s an hour a week,” her lips worked behind a trembling palm. “Do you have a job? Do… Classes or volunteer work? Anything?” If Alex read too deep into that question, he could hear what she really meant. Based on their telephone conversations, Pam had kept in good contact with family friends and much of the company Alex kept outside of work, and he’d not seen nor spoke to a single one of them since the divorce. There were always more important things to do than reunion. No family retained, no friends, no colleagues. Alex had been alone since the divorce. That’s certainly how it seemed. But the real nail in the coffin was a clear reference to his living situation -- or lack thereof: “What do you do all day?”

Levelling with Pam was everything Alex was expecting it to be. Time hadn’t changed or jaded her. No amount of vomit-stained porcelain nor horrid nasal assaults would change the fact that Pam was a mother before anything else, and when that instinct called upon her to cut the only man she loved anywhere as unconditionally as Cameron out of their lives, she didn’t even blink. _“Your family hasn’t gone anywhere,”_ but she was smarter than to make the same mistake twice. Alex’s words meant nothing. Because some drugs are like extramarital affairs. You have problems, but you don’t want to deal with them, so you find someone who’ll stoop to your level. Someone attainable, someone easy, someone who can take it all away for the night. It’s a temporary fix to a more permanent issue, but it doesn’t matter so much how long it lasts when she hits that sweet spot and the chemistry in your brain goes nuts and you feel like you’re nineteen again, with this unadulterated freedom, a world of opportunities, and such wisdom you can ignore. It’s goddamn brilliant the first few times. It’s everything you want. Everything you need. Everything that matters now. You'll fight the descent, but not for long. She lures you in with comfort. Promises. All it’ll ever take is one hit, and everything goes away. Your pain. Your worries. Your desires. Your fears. Your family. Your life. Your identity. You slowly accept that this place you despise; this place that makes you feel so filthy, so dishonest; is the only safe place in the world for you, and it’s the only place you deserve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I don't have a proper beta reader, I call up my good friend Rae ([Subliminally_Twisted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Subliminally_Twisted)) roughly every chapter to get an outside perspective on Mary Jane as I write. Rae is my best friend, knows my writing style better than anyone, and he brought a few things to my attention. I won't get too deep into them (at the risk of sounding pretentious), but I think they should be addressed. So, just a few reminders:
> 
> 1) Mary Jane takes place _after_ its main events. After the relationship, after the worst of the addictions, after rock-bottom. It's story of reflection.  
> 2) I'm going back and editing like a madman when the entire story's up -- my writing is a bit stylised (I like it that way), but I understand it gets in the way sometimes. Feedback and constructive criticism is always welcome!  
> 3) Seth "Cherry" Hoffner is the lil dude who hanged himself in S1 and I'm offended you don't remember him. For shame.
> 
> Lastly and most importantly: I want you to imagine you are holding a baby kitten. She's super fluffy, has giant eyes and ears, and is so young she still squeaks instead of meows. HJYTFZad/[';pocdfethgr['-p0ikxdcetg sz2qw. That's what happens when you drop her on my keyboard. That's also how I feel every time you leave a comment or kudos. You are leaving me a tiny ball of fur and paws and therefore bringing me a priceless moment of joy. Thank you for your service (and your cats).


	5. Bellhop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW // In-depth descriptions of natural disasters/fire and hospitals. Mentions of domestic abuse and an allusion to self-harm.
> 
> Notice: Some formatting may be strange as a result of me having unwittingly updated while AO3 was experiencing system errors... Just my luck, huh? Let me know if you find anything wonky.

Sara's premeditated conversation starters were quick to put Alex off, so she didn't bother anymore. This must've been their fourth or fifth session, and she had to accept that Alex would spend his time there however he wanted. On the bright side, he finally completed his packet. Adhering to their pattern of reviewing each third the session after Alex completed it, Sara asked a few icebreakers about his social life. He had no difficulty filling her in on his physical health, but the emotion-focused second portion was a little more difficult to crack him on. This time, however, they barely made it past introductions.

So sometimes therapy consisted of nothing but Alex watching Sara perform daily office maintenance tasks. If she ran out of other clients to fuss with the files of, she filled a notepad. If she ran out of notes to take, she cleaned the office. The smell of brewing tea saturated the room as she moved from shelf to shelf, rearranging plants and knickknacks. She took out the trash, poured her tea, wiped down her ring-stained desk. Faced with boredom, Sara was human. She tripped over her skirt. She dropped things. Even at 5’8 or 5’9, she still had to stand on her toes to reach the tops of her cabinets. Today, she broke out the trail mix. The good stuff, with the M&M’s and maple syrup. She left a bowl on the table in case Alex got peckish too. It was salty.

The packet sat on the table beside Sara, already skimmed through and scribbled with notes. All of the questions inside of it were answered, but it was all very basic information. _Do you get out often? What do you do in your free time? Are your relationships mutually beneficial?_ The point was to get Alex thinking about those things, not for him to write everything down and take away from Sara’s sweet, sweet hourly. But Pam said it best when she asked, _“How long have you been alone, Alex?”_ And more aptly, she gave it away with each pitiful glance she spared him that morning. Alex’s social life was old noir on a silver film strip, fluttering under the shoes of every pedestrian in Joliet. His closest social link was a diner hostess and she skimmed through him faster than a Dukane Micromatic. Felicia was attractive to Alex because she reminded him of himself. The humour, the just-right amount of cynicism. Alex lied all the time, but he rarely felt fake around her. She just _got it._

But you don’t just _get it_ like that without personal experience. 

The longer Alex thought about it, the more it made sense, and the less he visited the diner.

“I’m not too interested in socialising nowadays,” Alex finally muttered. Felicia had plunged her hand into Alex’s chest, and he couldn’t get the image of her face out of his mind; pinpointing the exact moment she realised he had no heart to tug.

“Why’s that?” Sara asked.

“You’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.”

The therapist set the trail mix down and began flipping through Alex’s packet. “Disappointment, huh?”

He careened into the arm of the couch and rubbed his forehead. 

“I’m not a family therapist by any means, but you really don’t come off as someone disappointed with the people in your life. If not resentful, most people this long post-breakup look back on the relationship with resolution. And that goes for any relationship, romantic or otherwise. Maybe they’re disappointed. But you don't sound disappointed, Alex. In anyone.”

“I can be pessimistic, but I don’t dwell on it.”

“Okay.”

Alex wouldn’t have bothered leaving the apartment that day if it weren’t for the woman sitting in front of him. And that’s not just because they had an appointment. When Alex recognised the distance between her face and thoughts, he kept that in mind. Sara may or may not have seen Alex as a preoccupation to the finger she burrowed into her almonds… But she was good at her job. So good in fact, that Alex took out the trash and bought groceries and even briefly glanced at a job ad outside the bank before withdrawing money and forgetting all about it.

“My last roommate disappointed me,” Alex mentioned.

“The boyfriend?” It took her only a second or two this time. “…Boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. What did they do?” 

…Not enough, apparently. _They_ gave Alex a place to stay when the marriage fell through. _They_ worked to feed two mouths while Alex laid immobile on the couch during a violent detox. _They_ woke up at least once a night to throw another blanket over his juddering body and cushion his elbow from the wall it drummed so noisily against. _They_ helped Alex back up after every single relapse because Alex couldn’t stay clean for longer than a week at a time. _They _essentially mothered Alex for an embarrassing amount of time because he couldn’t so much as change out of a filthy sweatshirt without feeling suffocated -- yet couldn’t earn any higher recognition than that vague pronoun.__

“He was one of those people you know could move mountains if they really put their mind to it. But he had his flaws,” Alex dismissed. “I watched him ruin his life. All of that potential -- just flushed it.” He traced the design in his glass cup with a newly cleaned thumbnail. “Yeah. He had his shit together and helped me through withdrawal during and after the divorce. Let me live with him when Pam kicked me out. Guess I blew him up to be something he wasn’t.”

“He sounds like a good man,” Sara offered.

“He was. And is, probably. But he wasn’t perfect, and that’s…” his nail caught around some corner of the etching again. Michael wasn’t perfect. Nobody is. But there had to be a threshold, and that was where he sat. On the cusp of perfection. They were never an item, not really; that sense of obligation never existed between them; but they met a point at which they couldn’t have been anything less than that either. Once Alex was back on his feet, he was determined to make up for the resources Michael had so generously spared for Alex’s recovery. He scored an interview for Joliet’s DCFS office and had some string of recitations haunting the underside of his breath. As Alex got dressed in the bathroom the day of the affair, Michael laid in the annexed bedroom, visible from the door. Michael had seen plenty of him already, so Alex didn’t bother closing the door. The Cat, intent on blotching Alex’s newly ironed slacks in fur, was kept distracted with a piece of plastic that Michael flung around throughout the course of their mock-interview. _How’d you hear about this position?_ “A former coworker recommended it to me -- he used to work here and put me in touch.” _Yeah… FBI gig. That’s an attractive salary. Why leave?_ “The cases were getting to me. I was diagnosed with PTSD and my supervisory agent saw it affecting my performance. I’ve seen plenty of help since then -- hence the employment gap -- and I’m ready to allocate my skills someplace new.” _And what skills do you have that you think our team could benefit from?_ “I played soccer in high school and could easily kick the shit out of a child abuser.” _...Alex._ “What? Look at my legs. I could reach that bastard from the penalty box.” _Hah, unfortunately I don’t think your interviewer will appreciate that response as much as I do._ “Alright, alright… I spearheaded and closed several federal investigations in my last position working with and around victims of violent crime. Nothing is more fulfilling for me both as a lawman and as a father than getting justice for these families. I’m great with deadlines, culturally competent, and have an extensive background in criminal psychology.” _It could get interesting with a psychoanalyst on board… Can you tell what I’m thinking about?_ “That’s not quite how it works. But yes, I can. I'm not from the prettiest parts of town, was raised by a wifebeater, served in the US Army for six years, and have spent then ‘til now chasing down criminals. I can’t tell you which scars are from where, but don’t think I haven’t caught you staring.” Except that Alex’s father was the manual type and no bootcamp involved pressing red-hot irons to the outside of your thigh, as far as Michael was aware. “It was a long time ago.” The topic never came up again.

Alex got the job later that week. The pair celebrated with some casual dining, and Alex, not willing to accept any further generosity as is, picked up a new collar and some treats for The Cat. Michael tumbled into the couch upon their return home, tipsy. Alex, the chauffeur, ran through his nightly routine first. He dressed down, brushed his teeth, and bumped his fingers against a new addition to the drawer upon reaching in blindly for the floss. It was a glass container filled over halfway with butterscotch -- Alex’s favourite -- and accompanied by a brand new thing of Vaseline.

That’s what made Michael so perfect. Alex was no wordsmith, but they communicated just fine in silence.

That’s how the seal broke.

“He was a very cold person,” Alex decided. “When he focused on something, it got all of his attention. Very no-nonsense. Calculative. That’s the person I met; the successful one, the one who got things done. But he wasn’t so invincible when you really got to know him. He cared. He did. Probably too much. And living with me was just a really shitty time to do that.”

“Ah,” Sara followed. “So you think it’s your fault?”

Alex watched her resituate. Fetch her trail mix and snack on it like popcorn at the movies. Shrimp at a diner. “Is that what you heard?”

She got pretty good at figuring out when Alex was revving to shoot his mouth off. It only took a second of silence to channel it somewhere more productive.

“He bit off more than he could chew. You can twist that into whatever narrative gets your saviour complex going, but he was smarter than that and he disappointed me.”

“A relationship isn’t a promise to carry your partner’s baggage.”

“The ‘relationship’ wasn’t the promise,” Alex scoffed. “After I detoxed, I was clean for maybe a month or two before relapsing again. I tried everything. I completely cut out the bad influences in my life -- which, at that point, was virtually everyone except for my roommate. I was tired of making him -- what, _‘carry my baggage’?_ Yeah. I kept my use a secret. Found brilliant hiding spots, scheduled when I’d do it, adopted chores like taking out the trash and scrubbing down the bathroom every day. It was my problem, so I handled it. And then I overdosed.”

If you’ve ever stood up too fast and had to lay on the floor to let your head reorient, you have a very basic idea of what an opium overdose feels like. Amplify that by twelve, stir in a gastrointestinal tantrum, and lather on the panic and drowsiness of being smothered to death, and you’ll get a little closer. It’s the lurking knowledge that you could die, but not having the mobility to thrash. For Alex, it was the futility of hearing the emergency dispatcher he’d barely managed to get on the line, but being unable to weave anything comprehensible through the saliva filling his slack mouth. The last thing he remembered was The Cat trotting over from across the room to chew on his hair. And the first thing that came out of his mouth upon wakening to mechanical whirs, high-pitched beeping, and Michael’s horribly worried face was something to the effect of _“Fucking cat.”_

“He showed up to the hospital in his work clothes. And he hated the hospital, so he wasn’t thrilled. He told me to stop hiding things from him -- he was really pissed off before he started laughing about the cat thing. Anyway, I didn’t make anyone _‘carry my baggage.’_ The bellhop wannabe stole it from my car.”

Given Alex’s previously expressed opinions on cannabis, you can imagine how he reacted when Michael proposed using it to wean him off the harder stuff. Michael bought seeds from Debra and grew it in every closet and on every shelf that Janie couldn’t access, so it was convenient. And it could supply Alex with the release he sought without burning holes through his body and wallet.

Alex began violently coughing up phlegm with how hard that proposition made him laugh. He could get sprayed by a skunk and have a better time sitting naked in an automated car wash for the next forty-eight hours. However, he agreed, if only to get Michael off his case. The only hitch in the plan would arise when Michael caught him dangling a toy mouse over The Cat’s head when he allegedly was _“chasing that MJ, burnin’ one down, tokin’ it up, as the kids say.”_ Needless to say, no weed in sight. Just the cat.

Alex leaned forward and left the unfinished cup on the coffee table between himself and his therapist. Sara’s hands laid nearly flat on her clipboard, bumped by the pen beneath them. If Alex really stopped and watched her, he was almost certain he wouldn’t catch her blinking. “Do I blame him for what happened? Not at all. But you didn’t ask whose fault it was. You asked if he disappointed me. He did.”

“Because you thought he was larger-than-life,” Sara followed.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that. I just thought he was stronger than I was.”

“Okay. Going back for a minute to what you said about socialising: is that the kind of disappointment you were referring to? Subverting expectations?”

That was exactly what Alex was referring to. But Sara made it sound so… Suburban. ‘Expectations,’ like your mom getting upset with you for scoring poorly on a math quiz. Your mom was present for the majority of your childhood in this scenario.

Alex turned his head slightly. “Sure.”

“I’m assuming you used him as an example because he wound up doing drugs with you rather than helping you stop.”

That was part of it. “There was also what happened in Panama.”

“With the knife.”

“Yeah. I was still coming down, so I emptied my pockets and told him to flush it. Hoping that’d get the message across. It wasn’t very courteous of me… And not to get sappy, but I cared. I didn’t expect him to understand. But he must’ve taken that last bit to heart ‘cause next thing I knew, he flung the bathroom door open and had the frame gripped like he forgot which way was up. Barely made it to the bed before his legs gave out.” 

It took a second for Sara to register that, but she pushed some hair behind her ear and finally broke her gaze. 

“You can figure the rest yourself. He hated it, said he’d never do it again, and within the next month, my stashes started going missing. The clueless act went before long. Thus,” Alex made a small outward gesture, “the illusion was broken. He wasn’t perfect.”

 _“The illusion was broken.”_ Sara’s lips barely moved as she echoed that phrase, and didn’t seem to return to the room until she jammed a loud period at the end of it. The clipboard landed on the coffee table between them and the doctor rose from her seat. She dug through a file drawer across the room, then said, “I don’t think it says anything about your strength or character whether you’re able to change a habit -- yours or someone else’s.”

“Well, I think staying with a guy who leeched off of your hard-earned cash and tried to murder you does.”

“Even overlooking that,” Sara continued as if she hadn’t heard Alex’s quip at all, “People aren’t linear. You mentioned you were in the military. Do you drink?”

Alex shook his head. His time in the army was the furthest thing from his mind. “You’re thinking of a different stereotype.”

“Right,” Sara sat back down and flipped through Alex’s packet, aligning the sets of paper side-by-side on her clipboard. “Veterans are statistically much more prone to alcoholism than other substance abuse problems. But you said your father drank, right?”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions here, doc.”

She ignored that and transferred a few notes from the packet. Alex looked around the room. The clock hit 7:10. He could get up and leave right then if he wanted to. He wondered if Sara would charge him for the few extra minutes. “Judging someone’s character by the standards you set on first meeting them… Doesn’t work. It’s just not that obvious.” After a vaguely sympathetic pause, she flipped back in her notes. “Do you want to know what my first impression of you was?”

But Alex didn’t have anywhere better to be. “...Sure.”

Sara ran through her notes like a laundry list: _“Substance abuse, tendency toward depressants. Impatient -- possibly anxious. Easily agitated, unable to control his emotions, poor personal hygiene. Low self-esteem. Likely raised in poverty; unemployed, money is a problem._ Also, I thought you were straight, but I didn’t write that down.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “If you’re trying to make a point about first impressions, you’re doing a really poor job.”

“Yeah?”

“My parents were middle-class. We’ll make a behavioural analyst of you yet.”

Sara sighed humorlessly, “You’re a bad liar, Alex.”

A point Felicia had proven too well already.

“You don’t mess people up fundamentally; you just see their true colours. It’s all circumstantial. How long has it been since you talked to your roommate?”

Alex turned it over in his head. “Not since the fire.”

“That was… What, the beginning of the year? You probably left him with a lot of unresolved trauma. Questions, confusion. He needs closure just as much as you do.”

“You want me to go apologise? No.”

“I don’t get paid to argue with you, Alex. It’s your life.” The havoc of ink and paper in Sara’s lap found a place on the coffee table and she finally retrieved her snack. “Give it some thought. You lost a relationship. He lost everything.”

Out of spite or pettiness or maybe just the shift in tone, the childish _“I lost everything first!”_ defence tempted Alex. But it was a sunk cost. Sara was right. The house was gone, the cat was gone, and Michael’s career as well as any opportunities were likely stolen by the drug charges falsely pinned on him. Alex couldn’t begin to guess the state of his financial situation and, frankly, couldn’t be certain whether he was still a free man. It was difficult to be optimistic a day or so later when Alex revisited the neighbourhood and couldn’t see the sun. What was supposed to be a brisk, clear day was heavy and rotten. The sparseness of cars and families was eerily noticeable, but masked children hurried along by mothers clamping shirts over their noses weren’t entirely absent. If that wasn’t harrowing enough, the house itself hung like crucified remains in the middle of the cul de sac. Everything above the ground floor had been reduced to lone stakes and dangling chunks of wood. Little more could be said for what laid beneath it. Yet, Alex could still see it. He could still traverse every hall, replicate every arrangement and minor appliance, smell the neighbour’s perpetual barbecue, fall into that familiar safety of home. He could see the pattern on the garage door and watch how slowly it rolled up in the winter months. The grout he spread in the master bathroom when a tile cracked, the coin jar in the kitchen, the spare comforter abandoned in the closet of the guest bedroom -- it was still there and Alex could make out every detail. But he could see the backdoor from the middle of the street, the only obstruction being a charred hunk of lumber. That place was home to Michael since long before he even met Alex. All it ever did for the latter was blacken his lungs.

As persuasive as Sara could be, Michael Scofield was nothing but a flicker of yellow-orange on Alex’s noir strip and his two-dimensional way of thinking snuffed it. He knew better than to relight that fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update took so long! I'm trying my best to stick to the schedule, but there's a lot going on in my personal life. On the bright side, I've finished the full planning for this story (let's just say I'm looking forward to it!), touched up planning for another story I'm working on, and am considering an MJ sequel... So I've kept busy. Feedback appreciated!
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)


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